


It Starts there

by Nina36



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Marcus' pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:22:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina36/pseuds/Nina36
Summary: Brother Simon, the thing wearing him, doesn't get it, not until he spills his guts and says the one single truth that has stayed the same in his life: he loves God more than anything. He doesn't give a toss about the Church, but he would lay down his life in a heartbeat for the Man upstairs.And for Tomas. And it’s not a sin, it can’t be. He has seen sin, he has smelled it, tasted, bore it on his skin and that thing with Tomas is completely different, whatever in the bloody hell it is.





	It Starts there

**Author's Note:**

> Just Marcus' thought. Man, I miss the Exorcist.

It starts there, on that island, in a room where a grieving husband, a father, a righteous man loses his struggle against an ancient and wicked force unlike one he has ever met.

It starts when he kisses a man and it feels like cheating. Whether he's cheating on God or Tomas it doesn't truly matter, he is in love with _both_ , after all.

It starts with a human monster. Doctors talk about Munchausen's by Proxy, he can only see his father driving a hammer in his mum's skull. He almost loses Tomas the way he lost his mum, he buckles in the shower, after...tendrils of fear and relief making him shiver under the water.

One month into his apprenticeship and Tomas asks whether he remembers the people he has saved.

He does. It's a litany of names, a carousel of faces he is only too familiar with.

He shrugs his shoulders, and mumbles a halfhearted “yes”, but there is one name seared into his soul: _Gabriel_. He loved chocolate, he missed his dad, he loved trains. The motherfucking demon who killed him used his papà to lure him in.

It starts in a warehouse, in Chicago ... he is bleeding to death, and yet never has he felt more alive. 

The demon, however, uses Tomas to tempt him into integration. Fucking amateur. Don’t they know by now that it’s a waste of time with him?

Brother Simon, the thing wearing him, doesn't get it, not until he spills his guts and says the one single truth that has stayed the same in his life: he loves God more than anything. He doesn't give a toss about the Church, but he would lay down his life in a heartbeat for the Man upstairs.

And for Tomas. And it’s not a sin, it can’t be. He has seen sin, he has smelled it, tasted, bore it on his skin and that thing with Tomas is completely different, whatever in the bloody hell it is.

It starts because it is God's plan, and he _tries_. And it's hard, it's tearing him apart...because it's all fun and games until you have something (someone) to lose (worth living for). He had forgotten that. He had made sure that demons could not sink their filthy claws in too deep but, apparently, it was not enough. It was not what His Father wants from him.

Perhaps, that is part of God's plan for him too. And he doesn't whine, he doesn't resent the Almighty because he has already lost everything more times than he cares to admit.

Even if he's scared because he knows he will not survive another bout of loss and heartbreak. He is scared because the Lord asked him the one thing he isn’t sure he can give Him. He has been asked to _stay,_ to care, to tear down the walls around his heart and soul and it’s staggering, it’s daunting but he is trying.

Perhaps, the Lord will be merciful and He will grant an old tosser like him a quick, relatively painless death.

He's not scared of death. The idea of being worthy of Heaven used to keep him up at nights, but even that has been in the backburner...

...but...

But...he has seen, heard God and the idea of not being allowed to repeat the experience is perhaps the only thing that truly scares him.

Lie. Who is he kidding?

No, losing Tomas to the darkness terrifies him, it leaves him breathless and jolts him awake at nights.

Once upon a time, when he was still relatively young, and God’s grace flew through him, he fell in love. It took him a while to realise that because he was too used to love God and it was simple, it was all consuming, it was fulfilling. He had always known how to deal with his body’s urges, but that young novice was a game changer.

It starts on another Island, when he leaves his heart and his dreams in a room that stinks of rotten eggs, sweat and blood, and starts exorcising each demon as if it was his first and last one. He collects scars, he makes a name for himself, he forgets the dreams he used to have.

He dreamed of dancing with the young woman with black hair, to feel the warmth of her body against his, to have a house, a family, the songs that they both loved coming from the radio as they dined together.

He ran, he put thousands of demons and miles between them and, eventually, he came to believe that it could and would not happen again.

But it is not God’s plan for him.

And sure, he has no clue because He is not speaking to him, but he still recognizes an order from above when he sees it.

Tomas is – a contradiction: young but wise beyond his years, selfless and proud, smart and so incredibly naïve.

It starts with a vision: a man witnesses his greatest defeat – and he invades the younger man’s personal space and he finds peace for the first time in eighteen months.

They exorcise demons together: Tomas is reckless, he is itching to prove himself (to whom? God? He doesn’t need to. Doesn’t he know?), he misses his family and Marcus is happy and terrified.

Tomas patches him up after things go south – because toward the end, things always get messy – with an exorcism and he does the same. His flesh sings a song he had learned to ignore and the Adversary never fails to remind him that he is no longer a Priest. That he could take what he wants.

It doesn’t really work that way. And the adversary can go and sod himself on a rusty spike. He will always belong to God, and the fact that he is defrocked doesn’t change that.

Besides, Tomas is _still_ a priest. He won’t be the one to lead him into temptation. He doesn’t want that burden as well.

It started when he was eighteen and he decided that, yes, being a priest was the only thing he could do. He was an exorcist, he saved souls, and if vowing to be celibate, poor and obedient was the only way to keep doing his job – it was an acceptable bargain.

He belonged to God, after all.

He still belongs to God – and he wishes, when it takes all his willpower not to shorten the distance with Tomas especially when they are too physically close – and he knows what it means, he does, but he can’t do _that._

He ruined Mouse, he won’t do the same to the man who asked him to teach him how to be an exorcist – and just _kiss_ him, taste his skin, let him pulling him apart, tear down the last blocks around his heart he’s desperately trying to hang to.

 Days become weeks and months, and he cannot imagine his life without Tomas, now. He doesn’t even want to. He laughs and he is surprised that it feels real, Tomas is a rubbish driver and he is a terrible cook; they go to Mass together, every day, and they spar afterwards.

Tomas asks him about some of his scars and he lies to him – because some of those signs on his skin have nothing to do with his job.

Tomas has nightmares and he is always there, for him, even if he doesn’t always touch him.

His bible is his most treasured possession. Bennet said that he defaces it, but he doesn’t know that for a long time that book was his only possession, that the Lord told him that it was okay to draw on the pages, for he knew the words, and the words were true. Or, perhaps, he imagined it.

A demon in Texas infers that he is batshit crazy like his father, that he is a vessel of nothing because Gabriel’s death broke him entirely, that even the voices in his head left him.

He is afraid, for a moment, but Tomas banishes the creature and the windows shatter and the young man’s soul is saved.

“You are not crazy,” Tomas tells him, after, in a hot and frankly hideous motel room which smells of antiseptic and blood (his own and Tomas).

He nods – but he is, really. No person in his sane mind would want to be on the threshold and push back the darkness. And, perhaps, the demon is right, perhaps it was all in his head all along, but it gave him purpose, it made him grow up and not be his father’s son – it made him sleep at nights, and feel useful during the day, therefore, the demons can go and sod themselves.

“Marcus,” Tomas says and he almost hates the younger man for that, for being gentle, soft and not all hard edges as he is used to. He almost hates him for making him _feel_ so bloody much.

Almost, however, is what does him in every single time.

He _almost_ ran away the night his father killed his mother.

He _almost_ succeeded in cutting too deep, in the boy house.

He _almost_ escaped Sean’s notice.

He _almost_ told them to go and sod themselves before getting into that room with that demon the first time.

He _almost_ broke his vows when he met Mouse and fell in love with her.

It starts, in that room, when he is twelve and the world cracks in half and whether he has never truly heard God’s voice, like the demon inferred, or not – the words were nonetheless true and he has lived by them ever since.

It starts, again, on an island, when he pulls the trigger and he kills, again. And he feels all the weight of the decades of horror he has witnessed and he would bear them over and over if it weren’t that he doesn’t want to taint Tomas.

He leaves him with Mouse and he loses himself – and God remembers him, forgives him, loves him – or, perhaps, he is imagining it all, but His voice is loud and clear in his heart, ears, soul and he knows that he might be unworthy, but His heavenly father has forgiven him.

It starts. Again. Like a curse, like a benediction, like a song on an old cassette player whose rhythm drums in his blood.

He is an exorcist. He is a man of God. He belongs to God – he is in love with a man, and he knows that the fight will never end.

He’s on the threshold, again.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
